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Wednesday, September 07, 2011

A Question about Victim's Families and the Death Penalty

Sometimes we are told that execution, like no other penalty, provides closure to crime victims' families. Many victims' families feel that way when the death penalty is being sought. But, after the executions take place, do they actually feel the satisfaction that they were hoping to feel before the criminal was executed?

8 comments:

I don't know about the closure issue, but was anyone besides myself horrified by the audience reaction (enthusiastic applause) in last night's republican debate to the statement that Gov. Perry presided over more executions than any other person in US history?

"Sometimes we are told that execution, like no other penalty, provides closure to crime victims' families. ..."

Totally irrelevant ... and the sort of irrational thing that a certain sort of woman and all feminized men would say.

If the point of punishment is not justice (*), then then punishment must, perforce, create even more injustice. Really, VR, a C S Lewis scholar ought to understand this truth.

(*) which is likely something that the two foolish "liberal" persons who have already posted from the depths of their pointless sentimentality have no doubt chosen to be unable to understand; until gross injustice discomfits them personally, of course.

... moreover, as I have explained before, there are no good arguments against capital punishment, per se. This is because *all* normative laws are at least implicitly backed up by the threat of violence-unto-death; therefore, any argument against capital punishment is *also* an argument against all normative laws. And, really, understanding this fact, one sees at once why it is that whenever "liberalism" gets hold of the levers of state power, social anarchy always ensues.

Thank goodness we have the manly macho men here to tell us taht as long as the point of punishment is justice, noting that innocent men have been executed in it's pursuit is pointless sentimentality. It would be a shame to let the execution of the innocent stand in the way of justice.

"Closure" is a tricky term. Some grief counselors what to do away with the idea altogether. They argue that the loss will never be over or completely healed. Others who advocate for victim rights note that victims react in wildly different ways. Some dedicate themselves to the prosecution of the offender even to the point of using their own money to fight appeals. Other families make a point of forgiving the offender. "Closure" will be a poor justification for the death penalty in captial cases. Ilion has a stronger case in the concept of "justice." Here is the real controversy between the risk of letting the guilty off light or the risk of punishing the innocent.

It seems patently obvious that people who know their loved one's murderer is walking free will feel less satisfied than someone who knows that "justice has been done". That's not the same as saying that the life of the wounded party goes back to normal after the killer is executed.

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About Me

I am the author of C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, published by Inter-Varsity Press. I received a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.